Intelligent Things has qualified as a semi-finalist for the prestigious Cygna Award in Sci-fi.

A “semi-finalist” is one level of filtering better than “shortlisted” in their schema.

I’ll take my wins wherever I find them, so I say, woo-hoo!!

What do I get for this score? Bragging rights, the cool sticker above, which I can put on the book’s cover, and an invitation to a gala conference/dinner in April where the final top winners are announced. Speakers include best-selling authors, movie producers, and agents.

I would be tempted if this grand event were held in New York, DC, or LA, but no: it’s Bellingham, WA, a small town north of Seattle where I earned my Masters degree many years ago.  I might go just for memories and laughs.

Intelligent Things (sci-fi, 80,000 words): Engineer Jennifer Valentine releases advanced AI assistants online to revolutionize the internet of things. But her softbots, called NODs, go rogue, and she must save the national power grid from disaster. With her consciousness uploaded online, she searches for the leader of the NODs and finds much, much more than she expected. Back in her lab, she must decide: erase the entire NOD world to protect the human world?

Readers Favorite.com

The characters are realistic and show valid concern for life and sentience on multiple levels. All in all, this is a great sci-fi thriller that brings the future straight to today. A must for fans of the genre! –Four Stars!

Holy prophet Chalmers, excellent!  — Prof. David Chalmers, New York University

…all three stand-alone novels in the Newcomers Series ground the potentially overwhelming mind-body question in an entertaining story about Robin and Andy, two androids—don’t use that term to them! – Online Reader

Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards:

…a wondrous, clever, unique, insightful book! You pose all of the big life questions in such organic ways. You make us fall in love with a simple piece of code, wow!… My mind was blown … What a pleasure to read!  – Judge, 27th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.

Ebook – Kindle: ISBN-13: 978-1-7322274-7-7 (Mobi) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QLNLS88
Amazon Paperback: ISBN-13: 978-1-7322274-8-4 (Paper)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QLNLS88

Ebook – Smashwords ISBN: 978-1-7322274-6-0 (Epub) bit.ly/AT-Smash